Cold winds, Colder man

[zenigatcha]

The door open to one of the winding alleys of Paris. It's raining and gusty, probably not a winter evening on the other side of the door but instead a chilly autumn night.

Taking off his coat and giving it a little shake in the door, and then heads to the bar. When he doffs his hait and sets it on his still-damp coat beside him, he reveals jet black hair in a short military crop. There are fewer lines to his face than usual, but the ones that are there have nothing to do with smile and laughter.

Zenigata Koichi, freshly minted Interpol agent, sits down and orders a scotch, and then fishes a battered note book and a click-top pen. He checks his watch and then resumes his review of his notes.

Comments

[sunbaked_baker]

It's interesting, Sunshine thinks, to see the differences a life lived can have. This person has the shades of the Zenigata she knows, but his shadows hold a different sort of fire.

So at some point after the man arrives, a red-haired woman - mid-twenties, wearing jeans and a green sweater with the sleeves pushed up to her elbows under her apron, its light blue dusted with flour like high clouds - sets a plate with a fragrant, still-warm cinnamon roll on the bar in front of him.

"Chilly night," she remarks, faintly wry.

[zenigatcha]

"Not beignets? A sweet in a bar is strange enough, but -- this?" Zenigata says, looking down at them as they're presented to him. But then he huffs out a soft laugh. "Still, can't look a gift horse in the mouth."

He peels a sticky layer off, before he pops it in his mouth. There's a brief moment of chewing, as emotions cross his face: resignation, surprise, very pleasant surprise, and then some obvious gratification that comes with finding out you have really good food in your mouth.

"My compliments!" he manages to say, once his mouth is cleared. "You don't expect to find quality like this in a bar."

[sunbaked_baker]

"It's true," she admits, grinning with pleasure at his visible surprise and enjoyment. "I'm not always here, but when I am I like to do some baking. Unexpected deliciousness is the best sort of surprise."

[zenigatcha]

"They be better paying you consummate to your skill," Zenigata said, though it's hardly the gushing praise his older self would give. This one's at least fifteen years younger, maybe more. He always did wear his age heavily.

The scotch appeared, but distracted, he didn't notice. He takes it up for a sip, and then tilts his head. Good scotch. Very good.

This is the best bar he's wandered into in a long while.

[sunbaked_baker]

"Never fear," she assures him, nodding. "I am well compensated for my time and efforts."

Mostly for her tab's sake, but also because she loves the look on peoples' faces when they take their first bite.

"First time here?" she asks after a moment of gazing curiously at him.

[zenigatcha]

"Mm," Zenigata hums an affirmative around a mouthful of cinnamon roll. He finishes his bite, and then says, "Not what I'd thought I'd find when I saw it, though. This doesn't feel like any Parisian bar I've wound up in so far."

Boy howdy, it is not, is it?

[sunbaked_baker]

The red-haired woman chuckles a little. Yeah, she can imagine it wouldn't feel like a Parisian bar.

"You new to Paris?" she asks, instead.

[zenigatcha]

"I'm in and out," Zenigata says, tapping his fingers against the tumbler between his hands down that the cinnamon roll has been totally devoured. It can never be said that Zenigata was always nice, but his appetite has always matched his size. "I work out of Lyon, but work brings me to Paris frequently. I'm originally from Japan."

[sunbaked_baker]

"I've not traveled so much, myself," she says, considering, "but I imagine that's a pretty significant change of scenery. Has it been a hard to adjust?"

[zenigatcha]

"After my time serving in the JSDF, it's not too jarring," Zenigata says, which explains a certain ramrod bearing and the hair. "But that was a time ago. Can't say it's where I want to spend much time. The faster I wrap up this job, the faster I go home. Not like there's any path for me here."

He tapped his glass, and then said, "If there was I wouldn't be in this bar."

[sunbaked_baker]

She frowns slightly, curious. "What's the job?"

"If I can ask."

It's a bar; he can tell the stranger that she's being nosy, if he needs.

[zenigatcha]

"You can, it's made the rounds on the news. Are you Parisian? You must know," he took a drink of his liquor and tried not to roll his eyes as he spoke, "International 'gentleman thief' Lupin The Third has a taskforce that's been attempting to catch him for some time now. I am Zenigata Koichi, heading up the Lupin Taskforce."

[sunbaked_baker]

"I have heard of Lupin the Third," she replies instead of answering whether she's Parisian or not, raising her eyebrows, "Good luck on catching up with him. I don't envy you, though. That can't be an easy task."

[zenigatcha]

"It is a thankless job, but it must be done. He's a menace that can't be allowed at large, and every country in and out of ICPO's jurisdiction wants a piece of him," Zenigata said, before he tosses back the last of his scotch. "It's demanding, and I hate it, but it'll be worth it when he's clapped in iron and handed off to whichever country gets to try him first."

The glitter of the hunger is there in his eyes; but it'ss not the excited, challenged sparkle that he gets as an older man, ready to meet his foe in battle. It's a darker thing, frustrated and angry. This is a starved wolf, not a partially domesticated one.

[sunbaked_baker]

"The tasks that must be done are so often the thankless ones," she nods, a little more somber, the words half to herself. "The world keeps turning thanks to difficult tasks being done where no one sees."

She takes up a bottle of scotch from the array of bottles behind the bar, and lifts it slightly in an unspoken question.

"Can I ask what makes you hate it?"

[zenigatcha]

"Plenty of reasons," Zenigata said, lips curling into an unpleasant grimace, so far from his usual expressions they may as well belong to someone else. "Keeps me away from home ands sends me all over the world when I could be with my family. For every time we do stop him, he's robbed three more places instead. The man's a force of nature and the department expects me to catch wind with a butterfly net. It's a farce. But someone has to do it, someone is going to do it, and that someone's me."

There's just something in the way he flashes his teeth, hungry and mean. "Then I'll get my life back on track and get back to Japan. As beautiful as your nation is, it isn't home."

[sunbaked_baker]

That is answer enough. The red-haired woman moves to pour the man another shot of scotch.

"It doesn't matter which country it might be, how great it might be; if it's not home, it's simply not home," she nods, understanding. Less sure, she adds, "And it can be frustrating, to be kept from where you want to be."

Whether that is home or elsewhere.

"What kind of plans are you making, for when you've caught him and you get back home? Family vacation?"

[zenigatcha]

"Rest. Reacquaint myself with my daughter, get my son back on track. Spend some quality time with my wife for a change," Zenigata says, musing on all the things he could be doing. "The last one's important. This hasn't been easier on her, raising my daughter at home without me."

He should be there for her. He hasn't been, in so many ways. Maybe once this is done, they can rebuild together. That'd be nice. One big, happy family.

"Maybe one more child, if things stable out," Zenigata muses. "I'd like another boy. The first one was adopted, though I do love him, our family's very traditional. My father wouldn't like an adopted child to inherit the family legacy. It puts us in a strange position, but I think we could make things work for everybody to be happy."

[sunbaked_baker]

"If you'll forgive me saying so, that sounds like a lot, and all of it more easily said than done," the red-head remarks, with sympathy. "Family dynamics are messy at the best of times, and nothing is ever certain."

She does not comment on an adopted child's fear of being replaced by their parents' 'real kids.'

"You work in a volatile field, too, one that demands a lot from you," she adds, knowing better but unable to not say something. "Best to figure out early-on how much you're willing to let it take, yeah?"

And try to make peace with that.

[zenigatcha]

This Zenigata has not yet grown to understand just how much his son needs him. What he needs him to be. But he makes a little thoughtful noise, before he gives a little nod.

"Its already had a cost," he points out, tilting his head. "But in the end, Lupin will be caught and I can go on with my life. Might even be glad for them to pack me up and send me to Hokkaido to work the quiet little villages with only a bike and a jitte at my side."

He chuckles softly, already rueful. The hunger at the heart of him knows that will never be enough.

[sunbaked_baker]

"You've certainly got the drive for the task ahead of you," the woman remarks, offering a faint, wry, slightly fond smile.

"Though, I have to wonder. Even you call the department's expectations a farce. If the wind can't be caught in a butterfly net, where does that leave your family?"

When do they get him back?

Sunshine knows she treads a fine line here, but she can play the good-intentioned (if somewhat nosy) stranger like a pro.

"You mentioned that a lot of the care for your kids has fallen to your wife... communication can definitely help to ease feelings of having to go it alone. Have you discussed any of your future plans with her?"

[alongfallfromgrace]

"So I think I have the heat right this time, but the rats refuse to taste test any more. What do you think, baba?" Wei Ying, in a flurry of robes and creative energy hustles over from the kitchens and shoves a bowl of spiced lotus chips under Zenigata's nose.

Give him a minute.

His brain will catch up with what his eyes are telling him soon.

Have a lotus chip in the meantime.

[zenigatcha]

There is a brief pause, before a voice that hasn't been entirely graveled by cigarettes and adventure says, "My boy, you are most certainly not my son as he is at least ten years your junior, and the wrong sex to be my daughter."

He's not mad, just amused in a sharp-edged sort of way.

[alongfallfromgrace]

Wei Ying freezes like a startled hare.

(That is, all wild-eyed staring and borderline horror)

This man is Zenigata. This man isn't his Zenigata. There's the sick, swooping feeling of missing a step, the same dizzying wrongness as when a powerful purple-clad cultivator threatened to end him and it both was and definitely wasn't his beloved shidi.

"Haha, um. My mistake." He apologizes on auto-pilot, taking a quick skip step back out of not-his-Zenigata's space.

[zenigatcha]

Still smiling in a far less brilliant way than his elder self, Zenigata does take a lotus chip and pops it in his mouth, before he makes a humming note of approval. "S'good though, your father will be proud."

Little does he know how true that is.

[alongfallfromgrace]

"I hope so." He says, because he doesn't know what it means, seeing this younger version of the man he knows. Is his baba gone? Just replaced, for a time? He refuses to panic - that can be for later, if needed. Turns out, there's always plenty time for panicking later.

"Ah, forgive this one's forwardness, but there's a pot of soup on the stove, if you are hungry." Look, this isn't his Zenigata. It may never be.

But he owes Zenigata more than he can repay, so he'll happily feed this unfamiliar version as he would any other family member.

[zenigatcha]

"Well, if it's to the same quality as the cinnamon rolls that were presented earlier, I'll gladly take a bowl," Zenigata said, warming up slightly. (One consistent thing in Zenigata's life: he's always been a big eater.)

[alongfallfromgrace]

"Oh, I could never claim to be as good as Sunshine." Wei Ying laughs, "But I will get you a bowl, and you can tell me if I got close to the mark." He retreats, leaving the lotus chips behind.

If he has a quiet tiny breakdown in the kitchen, that's his own business. He doesn't know what this means - is the man he knows as baba still here? If he isn't, will he be back? Or is this another loss that has stolen away his family?

He still returns, shortly, with a steaming bowl of pear almond soup, presenting it with a small bow.